Many affiliate marketers only rely on pay per click advertising to get traffic to their presell website. It is a good traffic generation strategy, although it's a little bit tough if you are just trying to get started with this business.

For affiliate newbies, I always recommend search engine optimization because they can learn the ins and out of affiliate marketing without losing money during this learning curve.

First, let's answer to this question: what does SEO mean?

Seo stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, how to get your affiliate website at the top of the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Whenever you perform a search in the search engines (Google for example), you will have a page with 10 results (or more if you changed the settings). The page is divided in two parts: On the right side, you have the paid Results (AdWords) and on the left, the paid results: the SERPs.

SEO will help you to get your site on the first page of the SERP's (also called organic results).

While it is easier to get a top ranking in MSN than in Yahoo and Google, sometimes weird stuff happen …

I tried to get a site ranked in MSN for its main keyword, since it was an easy word to target, but I got the high ranking in Google alone, not in MSN.

What about Yahoo !?

Yahoo is tougher to get in, and I did not even register my site in their directory yet.

I prefer to focus only on Google for my sites and blog because I also get traffic from Yahoo and MSN. Sometimes, I will get a high ranking with MSN, but I do not try to optimize my sites for any of these 2 other Search engines.

Do you need free traffic as an affiliate?

The answer is yes, whether you are a newbie or a market veteran, you want free traffic to your websites.

What I like with SEO is that it does not require a lot of money to start when you are focusing on one or two websites only. But if you have some cash, I would advise to outsource.

Another question that you may ask is: Do I need a software?

No, you do not need a software either. I had a software named Traffic Travis (does almost everything that Keyword Elite does). However, I used it only two or three times just to check my competition.

It's true that a good keyword research software will save you a lot of time, but it's not required. Plus, a software is never a magic pill, you need to understand that you need to do the work.